Most of us will get turned on at night by the very same things that we will demonstrate against during the day — the erotic mind is not very politically correct.

This remark is associated with Esther Perel’s public commentary on the tension between erotic desire and social/political ideals—an idea she often raises in talks and interviews about modern sexuality, fantasy, and the limits of “ethical” or ideologically consistent desire. The line is typically used to illustrate how private erotic imagination can diverge sharply from a person’s public values or activism, especially around power, gender roles, taboo, and transgression. Perel’s broader point in these contexts is not to endorse harmful behavior, but to distinguish fantasy from conduct and to describe how desire frequently draws energy from what is forbidden, risky, or symbolically charged rather than from what is morally approved.

Perel is pointing to the frequent mismatch between people’s public moral/political identities and their private erotic imaginations. She suggests that desire is often shaped by taboo, transgression, power, and fantasy—elements that may conflict with one’s daytime commitments to equality, consent culture, or political ideals. The line is less an endorsement of hypocrisy than an observation about the psyche: erotic life does not always follow rational ethics or ideological consistency. In Perel’s broader work, this tension becomes a therapeutic and cultural question—how to acknowledge fantasy without confusing it with values or behavior, and how to talk about desire honestly without collapsing into shame or moral panic.